Cathleen Schine - They May Not Mean To, But They Do

Daniel said he was not hungry. He sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?” his mother said. “Tired? You work too hard. You need a vacation. You’re the one who should have gone to California, Danny, not me.” She came over and rubbed his head. He still had all his hair. Just like his father. “Poor dear.”

Daniel stared at the floor, at his own big feet, at his mother’s feet in scuffed slippers.

“Mom,” he said softly. He did not want to alarm her. “Mom, a mouse just ran across your foot.”

His mother laughed. “Oh, him again.”

Daniel telephoned Molly from the subway platform. “Do you realize how much an attendant will cost?”

“She doesn’t need an attendant.”

“Oh, but she will. And soon, believe me.”

“How do you know?”

“Molly, a mouse was standing on her foot.”

That was an alarming development, Molly had to admit. “But I don’t see how an attendant would help with mice,” she said. “Did you call the super?”

“Of course I called the super. The exterminator is coming tomorrow. But that is not the point and you know it. She has to have some help. Which means she has to spend money. Which means she has to get some money. She won’t take it from us, and we don’t have enough to cover it, anyway, which means she has to sell the house.”

* * *

“How would Daniel and Coco like it if I told them to sell their loft,” she said to Freddie. “How would they like it, the loft they bought so many years ago when no one wanted to live in their disgusting neighborhood, the loft they so lovingly restored bit by bit until now it’s worth millions of dollars, how would they feel about that ?”

“But the point is to keep your mother in her apartment,” Freddie said gently, “to keep her independent and, and … mouse-free.”

“Yes, but—”

“Daniel’s just trying to figure things out, honey.”

Molly grunted a thank-you, but no one understood about the house. Freddie thought it was a dump, anyway. It wasn’t a dump. It was rustic. If by rustic you mean uncomfortable, Daniel once said. No one understood.

Joy thought of asking Karl to dinner. Boeuf bourguignon, a baguette, a salad — she could see the meal, it looked lovely, civilized, and Joy would have given a lot to feel civilized. Instead, she felt lurching and matted, like a wild dog. She hadn’t made boeuf bourguignon in twenty years. She’d barely eaten boeuf in twenty years. The thought of it, the fat as it browned in the pan, was sickening. And she was no chef these days, scuffing around the kitchen tugging weakly at the recalcitrant refrigerator door, burning toast.

“We’ll order Chinese,” Karl said when she told him her problem.

“We’ll eat on paper plates!”

“Like young people when they move into their first apartment and haven’t unpacked the boxes.”

Joy wondered what it would have been like to be young in a first apartment with Karl, no money, boxes of books, and a scratched desk from home. Joy and Aaron had furnished their first apartment with a decorator, Danish modern, she had gotten rid of most of it, uncomfortable stuff, though it was worth a fortune now, judging by Antiques Roadshow.

“Where was your first apartment?” she asked Karl. “After college?”

“I lived with my parents for a couple of years. Saved money. Then Joan and I got married and we bought the place I’m in now.”

“You were always careful.”

“And dull.”

“No, I mean it in a good way. You were always not careless.”

“You were always glamorous.”

“And ditzy.”

“I mean it in a good way, too. You were like sunshine, that kind of glamorous. Bright and shining and warm and cheerful. And unattainable.”

Maybe I’ll put out real plates, Joy thought.

* * *

The dining room looked pretty. Joy had stacked all her files in shopping bags that were pushed into one corner of the room. At the florist she bought a petite arrangement of small flowers gathered into an old-fashioned bouquet. There were candles, unlit; she could not find a match.

“I go,” Marta said when she had helped Karl off with his coat and settled him into a chair. Gatto jumped in his lap.

Joy said, “Just what I needed, right? A dog.”

“I had a dog as a kid. I loved that dog.”

“Never got one for your own kids?”

“No. Joan couldn’t bear it.”

“The mess, the walking, and the kids promise to take it out, but then they have homework…”

“No. It was just she loved her childhood dog so much, and when he died she was heartbroken, and well, if we had gotten a dog, they don’t live that long, it would certainly have died in her lifetime, and she said it was just too painful. She just didn’t want to go through that again.”

Joy brought the containers of Chinese food out on gaily patterned trays. It was a picnic, the takeout containers right on the table. She noticed Karl did not bother with chopsticks. Aaron had insisted on them when they had Chinese food, saying forks changed the flavor. But Joy was never very handy with chopsticks.

If Karl got a dog, she thought, they could walk their dogs together, if his dog liked to walk. Otherwise they could carry them together. People would stop them to ask about the little dogs. Karl could get a basket for his walker.

“I can’t think that way,” he was saying.

“About what?”

“Worrying about getting attached, about the pain of losing someone. I can’t live like that. Not anymore. Too old…”

Joy did not bring up her idea of a basket for Karl’s red walker. He didn’t seem to be talking about dogs anymore.

“Thank god it’s almost time to drive Mom Upstate, away from that man and into the bosom of her loving family in her own little house.”

“You’re a little prudish about your mother,” Freddie said. It just came out.

“I don’t want her to be taken advantage of, that’s all.”

“I’m not sure what you and Daniel think Karl is after. Her virginity? Isn’t it possible he just really likes her?”

Molly had assumed her sullen face, an expression so infantile and so obvious that Freddie was always tempted to laugh. Instead, she said, “You just don’t like it that your mother has a boyfriend. Admit it.”

“He’s not her boyfriend.”

“Whatever that would mean, anyway.” But Freddie was happy to drop the subject. She had her own relatives to worry about. Her brothers and sisters would soon be there, though not for long.

“They’ll be in L.A. for three days, that’s it, three lousy days. It’s probably the last time they’ll see my father, the last time we’ll all be together, and I can’t decide if I wish they’d stay longer or leave after one night or not come at all. I have a fucked-up family.”

“He’s not her boyfriend.”

* * *

“I’ll miss you,” Karl said.

He was wearing a cashmere blazer. Joy patted his arm. Aaron had favored hearty tweed. She’d always loved his custom-made jackets and suits. Now they called them bespoke. Aaron had looked like a country gentleman, what country she could not have said, but she would have followed him there, she knew that much. She had followed him there, she supposed. The sleeves of his sweaters and tweeds had always been rather itchy to her touch. She ran her hand along Karl’s arm again. “Soft,” she said.

Karl was someone you could call dapper and mean it as a compliment, not a suggestion of fussiness. Marta did right by him. He looked marvelous today, Joy thought, in the spring sunshine, his shoes polished, his blue shirt pressed, his tie a deeper blue paisley.